Weekend

This weekend was mostly uneventful, except for a nice lunch with fellow RA ladies Saturday, continuing my duties as Head Nurse (my mother had surgery last Thursday), and a couple of lethal cocktails at grubby Palmer’s last night.

My mom slipped and fell on ice a week and a half ago just walking to her car. She wound up dislocating and fracturing her right elbow in several places and was immediately rushed to the ER. I can really empathize with the pain she’s in and the frustration she feels at not being able to do hardly anything for herself. Right after the injury happened and she was back home wearing an uncomfortable splint and sling, she exclaimed a few times that she was sick of the pain, sick of the burden and inconvenience and just wanted her arm to be normal again. I reassured her that she will heal and get better, yet at the same time I couldn’t help thinking about the similarities between her temporary injury and pain and my own physical struggles from RA. Of course the big difference is that her pain and disability will go away and mine most likely won’t. I’ve been happy to help her out with things – getting dressed, hair-washing, piles of laundry, cooking, pillow-fluffing, cleaning, and anything else she might need. However I do have to admit that Nurse Angela is ready to retire after only a couple pathetic weeks of an increased workload. My dad really isn’t much of a help in this situation so the majority of the “nursing tasks” have been left to me. He will be learning how to do his own laundry though. Soon. I refuse to touch his underwear.

Saturday afternoon I met up with three other women who have RA – we had lunch at Granite City in Maple Grove. In September I met Amy and Nikki at a RA event at The Lexington in St. Paul that was put on by the Arthritis Foundation. We happened to be sitting at the same table and started chatting and by the end of the night agreed that support groups for young people with arthritis is a need that is seriously lacking. We had such a good time talking and sharing a bit of our own RA stories that we decided to try to arrange meet-ups ourselves. So far this has worked out pretty well and we’ve been trying to get together once a month. Yesterday it was great to see Amy again and we also met two new women who joined us. It was really good to be able to talk and share with each other all of the RA stuff that nobody else understands or cares to hear about. I’ll probably make more posts about our group sometime in the near future and hopefully with some photos.

So…it was a fairly good weekend, despite that it SNOWED again. I’m starting to feel like I’m trapped in some endless winter-purgatory-nightmare. Thank God tomorrow is March 1st. I could really use some sun and warmth.